


It's Simple Addition

by hostagesfic



Series: Beginners' Mathematics For Dummies [1]
Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: M/M, Mpreg, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-14
Updated: 2013-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-29 05:34:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/683418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hostagesfic/pseuds/hostagesfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>decided going to be next kim k,</i> he texts Harry. <i>will u b my kanye??</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Simple Addition

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to P and Hezza for being gracious when I texted them word count updates throughout the day. This is entirely based on Nick’s preoccupation with the phrase “if I were pregnant,” and is, I think, the single schmoopiest thing I’ve ever written. Warnings/content: mpreg, tears, ridiculousness. This fic assumes a world where male pregnancy is, if irregular, not unheard of.

Nick considers texting Harry, _hey so remember me letting you top a couple months back_ , but decides against it. He’s probably, hopefully, never going to have this opportunity again, and Harry deserves to hear it face-to-face.

That’s the plan, anyway, except that Nick is a bit of filthy coward, and the first night he’s grumpy and just wants to snuggle and watch Oceans, and the second night Harry’s knackered with practice and dizzy-bright with a couple beers on an empty stomach (thanks ever so, Tomlinson), and the third-

And then the Brits come and go and Nick watches Harry on the stage and _wants_ , and it’s softer than the years before, muted and gentled around the edges, hinged on this new knowledge. It’s no less real, still catches Nick’s breath and won’t let it go until he’s pressing Harry against the marble stall of the fancy hotel they’re partying in, after. He licks over Harry’s pink, shiny lips and tastes the rasp of his tongue and surely, second-hand alcohol is okay, in such a small dose.

Nick wants to tell him, then, but there’s a bandmate banging on the door and a handler to steer Harry away, back into the bright lights and the arms of some new starlet to have their photo made, and Nick takes a cab home, texts Harry simply, _I love you, popstar._

“You’re getting soft in your old age,” Fiona says, suspicious, when he offers her half of his breakfast sandwich the next morning between Rihanna and Fall Out Boy.

“Getting _soft_ ,” Nick scoffs, and Fincham sighs from the other side of the room, fiddling with cables for the upcoming Quiff Cam feature. “No penis jokes, please, Nicholas.”

_Finchy’s iron fist is even fistier today,_ Nick texts Harry, and lets it roll off him like water off a duck’s back. He is cool, he is calm, he is _collected_ and _mature_ , and-

And then he spends five minutes sobbing in the bathroom, and it’s not because of Fincham’s embargo on penis jokes, it’s not, it _isn’t_ , it _can’t_ be.

He comes back to the studio and his nose feels two times bigger and his eyes are puffy, and he hates Matt Fincham with the fires of a thousand suns. He ignores Matt for the rest of the program and through their meeting afterward, ignores him all the way down to the lobby as they share a lift with LMC.

Then he goes to lunch with Aimee and sniffs through a bottle of tonic water, which he hates, but he can’t have wine like he wants (she gives him a weird look and he just says it’ll make him puffy, which is true). _You know what else makes people puffy?_ he thinks about saying, but his phone buzzes, and it’s Harry’s stupid grinning face flashing with an incoming call, and yeah, this is definitely something he needs to tell Harry first.

It’s just.

He means to.

But then he blinks and they’re on his front porch at four in the morning and Harry is shivering in the mist in one of Nick’s shirts, and the cabbie’s headlights are pulling around the corner onto their street.

“I love you,” Nick says, quickly, and grabs Harry’s biceps, squeezes maybe a bit too hard and kisses him fiercely.

Harry makes a happy, sleepy little noise against his mouth and sucks at Nick’s lower lip as he pulls back. “Call me?”

“You’re rubbish on the phone,” Nick says, soft, and Harry presses his palm to Nick’s collarbone, thumbs at his sternum, because he is, and they both know it.

“Text me, then,” he says, and the cabbie honks, because it’s a company car, and if Harry’s late to Heathrow they’ll probably sue Nick.

“Yeah,” Nick nods, dumbly, and lets him go.

;

So he’s back to square one, with a text open to HS on his phone and a bottle of apple juice between his knees on a Monday night in March. Nigella is spicing up her duck sauce with sherry, and Nick has never been less hungry and more thirsty than he is at this moment. He switches to a footie game and slumps against his couch cushions.

_what’s up,_ his phone buzzes.

_arsenault killing it,_ he replies, and wishes harry were _here_ , to lounge on and get him the orange juice that he’s pretty sure is in the back of his fridge but can’t be bothered to fetch.

Nick thinks he might be trying and failing to drown his sorrows in fruit juice, but really, there could be worse ways to deal with this.

Like a reality tv show.

Nick sits straight up on the couch, nearly upsetting his apple juice, and Aimee looks up worriedly from her book. Nick _wants_ a reality tv show. Nick _deserves_ a reality tv show for this, really.

_decided going to be next kim k_ , he texts Harry. _will u b my kanye??_

;

“Matt says you’ve been tetchy at work lately,” Harry says, and Nick puts down his iron.

“Well hello to you too, handsome,” he says, sweetly. “How are you, love? How’s your day been? Mine’s been alright. Anything we need to talk about? Oh yes? Alright. Now I’m ready.”

There’s silence for a moment and then Harry cough-laughs in that sheepish way he has when Nick points out that his socks don’t match or that he’s got a weird line in his hair from his headband or that he’s been on his phone texting Louis for the past thirty minutes.

“Sorry,” he says. “Just worried, I guess. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Harriet,” Nick rolls his eyes. “Just doing a bit of housework, trying to get wrinkles out of this wretched plaid you left wadded under my bathroom sink a month ago.”

“Huh,” Harry mumbles. Nick knows he’s trying to figure out when and why he did such a thing.

“That night you and young Niall decided to use my patio as the scene of your hedonistic Irish drinking game,” he clarifies, and Harry makes a noise of remembrance.

Nick talks about his latest call or delete with Rita and Cara, and the delivery of onepieces that showed up on his doorstep the other morning (“which I blame fully on you, Harold, and your perverse enjoyment of such pieces of clothing”), and Thurston chasing a wayward rabbit around the neighborhood.

Harry mumbles along and Nick listens to him falling asleep when he stops to take a breath.

;

The next morning, Nick wakes up to the chanting of monks from his alarm clock, and forgets to check his phone until he’s out of the shower, combing his hair out. By that time he’s running nearly late, and he shrugs on his biggest, bulkiest sweater hurriedly, smoothes it out in the mirror, feeling self-conscious. He’s in the cab before he finally gets to look at his messages, and finds Harry’s pouty _you distracted me :(._

_Never,_ he sends back, and then, because Harry will worry, _pinky swear i’m fine, harry styles._

_Well_ , Harry replies, and then a prawn emoji paired with a bouquet.

Sometimes Nick wishes he could reveal Harry to the British public as the huge dorkface that he actually is.

Mostly, though, he just wants to keep Harry to himself.

;

He ends up ruining the plan three months in- he’s been stressing about the fact that he’s _finished_ his first trimester and Harry has no idea- when he and Aimee are having yet another lunch at the small cafe down the street from the studio. He’s finally gotten his appetite back, or, mostly, and he’s been nibbling dutifully at the artfully sheared carrots that decorate his panini plate. “When does young Harold get back into town?” Aimee asks, and Nick wouldn’t be so annoyed, but she’s asked him twice already this week, and he knows she’s not asking because she wants to know, but because she thinks there’s something he’s not telling her and she’s trying to make her point.

It’s the sort of underhanded obnoxiousness that he’d usually admire, but Nick is sick of never being hungry or else starving to death and having to eat healthily and remembering to take his vitamins and not being able to drink and having his trousers fit funny and having to go to spin classes on a regular basis, and he just _snaps_. “He’ll be back when he’s bloody back!”

“No need to bite me head off,” Aimee says, when she’s let Nick have a moment to reflect on his behavior.

He frowns and swipes a chip through his ketchup. “Sorry.”

“No you’re not,” Aimee says, but doesn’t seem too bothered, taking her phone out to check a text.

“Yes I _am_ ,” Nick protests, and feels like-

“Are you crying,” Aimee asks, her voice gone weird like she’s not sure whether to laugh or swear.

“No,” Nick says, and hides his face in a napkin, because it’s better to be seen as that weird bloke with a table linen fetish than a grown man who cries in public because his friend won’t accept an apology.

“My god,” Aimee breathes. “What the hell is _wrong_ with you.”

Nick swipes at his nose and glares at her. “There’s nothing wrong with me, Aims, pregnancy is hardly-”

Somewhere behind them and across the restaurant, a waiter drops a tray of glassware. It’s not related, unless the waiter is a secret service man or a mutant, but it’s definitely the sort of dramatic backdrop Nick feels that such a moment of horror demands.

“Pregnancy,” Aimee enunciates, feeling out the syllables like she’s at a wine-tasting.

Nick really wants a drink.

Instead, he sighs, and rubs at his eyes wearily. “I just haven’t quite told Harry yet,” he says, “so maybe don’t mention it?”

Aimee looks at him. “Nick, you’ve just sprung a _pregnancy_ on me and the first thing you say is not mention it to a mutual friend, I-”

Nick twiddles with his chip, making a mess of his mournful ketchup puddle.

“Oh,” Aimee says. “Oh, oh, Nick, no.”

It’s raining, outside, Nick observes. It’s really a shame; he’s wearing a nice jacket today, one that is most definitely not waterproof.

“Nick,” Aimee says again. “Nick, you don’t mean...”

Why he couldn’t’ve thought to bring an umbrella, why he couldn’t’ve have just checked the forecast for once, Nick will never know. Perhaps he can blame it on the baby mucking up his brain.

“ _Shit_ ,” Aimee pronounces, leaning back in her chair.

Nick tends to agree.

;

Aimee has to go back to work, but she brings a carton of mango sorbet home that night, and cuddles Nick for a full ten minutes before she gets distracted with Thurston needing a walk.

Nick showers while she’s out, and takes advantage of the quiet house to hook his phone up to the speaker on his bathroom counter and put on “One Way Or Another." It’s pathetic and lonely, but he doesn’t really care, and even if Aimee or Harry ever find out, it’s not like he hasn’t done a dozen weirder sex things in his life that they’re privy to. Harry would probably find it endearing, anyway.

He’s close, shoulder pressed into the cool tile, thumb rubbing firmly under the head of his dick, when the music cuts out and his phone rings.

When he sees “Matty Poo” flashing across the screen, Nick doesn’t even feel bad about ignoring it, finishing himself off across the floor of the shower with a moan and the thought of Harry’s mouth.  

;

“You what,” Harry says, very softly.

Nick closes his eyes, and has to rearrange his grip on his phone, because his palm is sweaty, and his fingers don’t really seem to be working. “I sort of forgot to tell you?” he says, and winces, “No, no, I didn’t- Harry, I didn’t _forget_ , oh god, I’m mucking this all up, it’s just. I wanted the moment to be right?”

“Uhm,” Harry says. “Now is- is now the right moment, then?” He sounds funny, but a sold-out, months-long world tour away from almost everything you love will do that to you. It’s the best excuse Nick has, and he’s sticking to it.

“Maybe not,” he admits, “I just- I accidentally told Aims, the other day, and it felt wrong not to’ve. Told you.”

Harry exhales, and Nick wishes he could see his face right now, wishes he could reach out and pull Harry in, wipe away the confusion and the hurt and the surprise and the questions in his voice. “Sorry,” he tries, and knows it’s not really enough.

“No,” Harry says, like he’s shaken himself back into focus the way he does sometimes. “No, Nick, it’s- just, are you okay? You’re okay? And the-” he pauses, and Nick holds his breath, and Aimee is yelling at Thurston and there’s some sort of rustling and banging of doors in the background on Harry’s end, and Harry says, “ _our_ baby’s okay?”

And yeah. They’re all okay.

;

Harry flies home on a Saturday morning. It’s eleven a.m. when his cab pulls up at Nick’s door, and Nick has been up since five, unable to sleep, nursing a glass of ice water with lemon against a nervous headache.

The worry dissolves when Harry steps inside, dropping his bags and coat in the foyer to sweep Nick into his arms, pressing his nose to Nick’s neck and kissing his shoulder. “Hey,” he says, and Nick grins into his hair. “Hello, popstar.”

Harry pulls back to kiss him, then, but it’s quick, and Nick makes a grumpy noise. “Hang on,” Harry mumbles, smiling at him. “Haven’t finished m’greetings.”

Nick holds onto his shoulders as Harry sinks onto his knees, pressing his face into Nick’s hip, big hands gentle on his sides like he’s delicate or might shy away.

“Hey,” Harry says, muffled into Nick’s shirt, and his warm breath is the only thing that makes Nick shiver, thanks. “Hi, baby. ’m home.”


End file.
